Yin Yang

Actress Sobhita Dhulipala's one personality lights our pages afire; the other's in an intimate chat with her friend of many years, Karuna Ezara Parikh. In the latter's words then, a glimpse into Sobhita's life

- KARUNA EZARA PARIKH

I first met Sobhita in 2014 on the Kingfisher Calendar shoot. As our crew sat down to lunch in the Philippines, we noted we were minus one person-that girl with the dreamy eyes. As we finished, she drifted in wearing a short skirt, more schoolgirl than sexy-an image exaggerated by the book she clutched awkwardly to herself. 'Where were you?' someone asked, exasperated. So softly, we had to lean in to hear, she said, stricken, 'I'm sorry, I was reading.'

If today I had encountered the oft-repeated story of how this nerd entered the Miss India pageant on a whim, I might have been sceptical. But on the second day in the Philippines, curled up in her room she told me exactly this. She reiterates it now, laughing. 'I was someone who used to mock pageant girls, but there I was, one of them.' She says she finds this happening often, that something she dislikes later flips. 'It's made me very wary of what I diss.' On the bright side though, this 'inconsistency' as she calls it, has served her well, adding, 'I find myself disintegrating in the mundane.'

As with the pageant, various turning points in her life came through impulse. The truth is, she easily admits, she did it to feel cool. 'There was a boy I had a crush on, I thought maybe if I win... She explains how she was searching for validation, but was hit with so much more. 'I was young. The kind of young that did not grow up in a metropolis. A part of her wants to laugh off her naïveté, but she is gentle with this past self, mourning her softly, 'There was an innocence before... Then referencing the loss of it, 'I say this without bitterness or resentment, but those were not good years.'